Lovingkindness For Challenging Times

Now more than ever, it has become apparent that all our lives are inextricably interwoven – our interconnectedness can no longer be denied. What we do to others, we do to ourselves. Our wellbeing and health is linked to the wellbeing and health of our fellows. This is why, now more than ever, in these trying times, cultivating lovingkindness is necessary.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Sharon Salzberg and I want to talk today about loving kindness as a force and as a power in our lives.

Many years ago,

I wrote a book called A Heart as Wide as the World.

And it was,

Oh,

Must have been almost 25 years ago,

Not quite,

But let's say 23 years ago.

And originally it had a different title,

Which I actually can't remember,

But I wasn't that pleased with.

And then I was sitting listening to one of my colleagues give a talk and she used the phrase A Heart as Wide as the World.

And I thought,

Oh,

That's what I want as the book title.

So I called the publisher and I really pleaded them,

Please,

Might we change this title?

And they finally agreed,

Kindly enough,

And they had already done some artwork for the original title,

And so there was kind of a scramble to get the cover to match A Heart as Wide as the World.

So,

Of course,

That gives us the feeling of expansiveness,

Right,

And openness.

So they started,

This was a long time ago,

They started mailing me all kinds of different images.

And one image was of a Van Gogh print,

And I can't remember the name of the painting,

But it was like a big open yellow sky and down at the bottom were just like a few crumbled huts.

And I thought it looked like a scene of total devastation.

So I said to somebody,

I think this looks like it should be the cover for the Grapes of Wrath or something.

And I shared it to a friend and she said to me,

This looks like a world that could use some love.

This looks like a world that could use some love.

So it did not become the book cover,

But lo,

These many years,

Her phrase has stayed with me and I feel like our time,

It's so pronounced to truth.

This is a world that looks like it could use some love.

So many times as I've taught loving kindness meditation through the years,

I've seen that people can often think of it as a kind of weakness or something sentimental,

Something even a little bit foolish.

And yet it really is a power.

It's a force.

I've often said that one can see kindness being depicted as kind of a secondary virtue.

Like if you can't be brilliant and you can't be wonderful and you can't be courageous,

Well,

Then okay,

Be kind.

It's nice.

It's good.

It's not great.

And yet it is great.

I think if we look back any of us at a time when somebody had faith in us,

Even if we couldn't see our way forward or they reached out to us,

They were generous with us,

We don't think of that person with a kind of contempt or pity.

It's with tremendous respect and gratitude that we think of them.

When I talk about loving kindness,

It's not in the sense of forcing yourself to feel anything or fabricate anything or manufacture a certain emotion.

In fact,

I think of loving kindness is not necessarily a feeling at all.

It reminds me of a line from this movie called Dan in Real Life that Peter Hedges wrote.

And one of the lines he wrote was,

Love is not a feeling,

It's an ability.

Love is not a feeling,

It's an ability.

And of course it is a feeling.

We know that.

And yet what about considering love as an ability,

As a capacity within us to care,

To open to,

To recognize,

To acknowledge,

To pay attention to differently?

And I realized that for myself that line resonated so much,

Love is not a feeling,

It's an ability because of experiences I had had doing intensive loving kindness practice where I realized that up until that time I would think of love really in the hands of another,

Which meant that they might offer it to me,

But they also might take it away from me.

And then I'd have nothing.

And it reminded me of this image that would come to me of like the UPS person standing at my doorstep looking down at the package,

Reading the address and saying,

I don't think so,

And kind of going off.

And then I go,

Wait a minute,

Then I don't have anything.

There's no love in my life.

But if we realize love as an ability,

It's something within us.

And other people certainly might nurture it and strengthen it or threaten it,

But it's ours to cultivate,

To take responsibility for,

To nurture.

And that is very empowering.

So love is an ability or loving kindness as an ability.

The way I think we can view it is not as a demand to act in a certain way,

To develop a more loving heart does not mean you're going to say yes to somebody or let them move back in or give them money or let them hurt you.

It's something quite different than that.

It's an inner space of freedom where we recognize how our lives are inextricably interwoven.

I think often of the example that my friend Bob Thurman has used,

Who was till recently a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University in New York.

He's recently retired,

But he used this example of being on a subway and these Martians come and they zap the subway car so that those of you who are in there are going to be together forever.

So he goes on and says,

Well,

What do you do?

If somebody's hungry,

You feed them.

Somebody's freaking out,

You try to calm them down,

Not because you necessarily like them or you approve of them,

But because you're going to be together forever.

Well,

Guess what?

Certainly our time has revealed the face of interconnection,

I think very strongly to us.

And it has many,

Many guises.

This is a particularly terrible face.

And yet there's also that recognition that,

Oh,

The sense of self and other and us and them that we hold and that can be useful in a certain way.

It's just a manufactured construct.

There is no wall dividing us and that what happens over there doesn't nicely stay over there ever.

It comes over here.

And what we do,

What we care about,

What we dedicate our energy to,

It matters because that too will ripple out along these lines of interconnection.

So one of the bases for developing this sense of recognition that is loving kindness is a belief that all beings want to be happy.

All beings want happiness,

Not in a superficial sense,

But a deeper sense.

We want to feel a sense of belonging.

We want to feel at home somewhere in this body and this mind with one another on this planet.

We all want to be happy.

And it's because of the force of ignorance that we can make so many mistakes.

For one thing,

We're taught so many lies and so many myths about where happiness is actually to be found.

But the urge toward happiness is not something incorrect.

It's not something to feel squeamish about because if that urge toward happiness can be aligned with wisdom,

With insight instead of with ignorance,

It can be like a homing instinct for freedom.

It can take us very far.

All beings want to be happy.

And that's an interesting reflection as we look around,

As we consider various people and various different relationships to us,

And as we consider ourselves.

We don't have to squelch that desire or think of it as greedy or craving or something like that.

It's correct.

But now let's figure out where happiness really is to be found.

And not only do all beings want to be happy,

All beings are so vulnerable to change and to loss,

Which is not to say that we all suffer to the same degree in life because we don't,

But we all do share this vulnerability and life can just change on a dime,

Can't it?

Right?

And sometimes this is like the compassionate side of love,

The tenderness that has us recognize the universality of the potential for suffering.

Sometimes we think of compassion as a very kind of hierarchical state.

Like I,

Who have it all together,

I'm looking at you way down there,

Whose life has fallen apart,

Which mine never could,

Because guess what?

It could.

So that compassionate side of love or compassionate aspect of love is really,

It's not so hierarchical.

It's very much a sense of being together and caring.

We recognize that all beings want to be happy and that we're all vulnerable to change and to loss.

And so that state,

That interstate that is produced,

It may be emotional,

It may not be emotional.

It may be a worldview shift.

It may be something to do with a sense of including rather than excluding.

And it certainly is a different way of paying attention.

So I use the example often like if you're looking at yourself at the end of the day and you're going to,

You're just in the habit of evaluating yourself,

Like how did I do today?

And let's say you're in the habit of pretty well only thinking of the mistakes you made and what you did wrong,

What you should have done better,

Let's just say.

So the cultivation of loving kindness is like a stretch.

It's like saying,

I don't want to deny that necessarily or pretend that's not true,

But what about anything else that happened today?

What's the good within me?

Can I wish myself well?

Can I make this offering to myself for happiness,

For peace,

And so on?

And we look at how we pay attention to others.

How many times have any of us been in a conversation where we're fragmented?

We're distracted.

We're not really listening.

We're thinking about the email we need to send or whatever it might be.

And one of the things we do in the cultivation of greater loving kindness is actually gather our attention and we're fully arrived so that we are paying attention differently.

And then a very important question is who do we pay attention to?

Who do we ignore?

Who do we overlook?

Who doesn't count?

And what happens when we make that stretch and we intentionally include them?

So this is our potential.

This is our capacity.

And in doing a practice,

We're not weakening ourselves or falling into kind of the sentimental side of things.

We are actually paying attention differently and are empowered by that.

We're going to do a loving kindness meditation together.

If you'd like to sit comfortably,

You can close your eyes or not,

However you feel most at ease.

If your eyes are open,

They can be like a little bit open.

You'd find a spot to rest your gaze,

Let it go.

This practice is done by resting our attention on the silent repetition of certain phrases.

These phrases convey the energy of the heart,

Paying attention differently,

Including rather than excluding,

Recognizing that this other being or ourselves,

We wish to be happy,

All of us.

We offer the phrases in a sequence,

Beginning with ourselves,

Ending with all beings everywhere,

Connecting to the boundlessness of life.

And what we do in the middle might change all the time,

Somebody we care about,

Somebody we know is in trouble,

Somebody we feel grateful to.

All those in different orders can appear in the middle part of our practice.

The phrases really are an offering.

A common way of saying them,

Beginning with ourselves,

Is something like,

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

Live with ease means in the things of day to day life,

Like livelihood or family,

May not be such a struggle.

May I live with ease.

People often say,

Well,

Who am I asking?

My response is,

We're not asking anybody,

We're offering,

We're gift giving.

It's as though you handed someone a birthday card and you said,

May you have a happy birthday,

May you have a great year,

May you be happy,

May I be happy.

So it's got some energy behind it.

It's forming an intention to wish well,

To include,

To recognize how connected all of our lives are.

It's not a practice where you have to try to force or fabricate a certain feeling or emotion.

The power of the practice comes in the complete wholehearted gathering of our attention behind one phrase at a time.

And when your attention wanders,

Because it likely will,

Or certainly will,

Don't worry about it.

Maybe you go to the past,

You go to the future,

Judgment,

Speculation,

Or you fall asleep,

Truly don't worry about it.

We say the most important moment in the whole practice is the next moment after you've been gone,

After you've been lost,

After you've been disconnected.

That's the moment where we practice letting go gently and just bringing our attention back.

And in this case,

It's bringing it back to the phrases.

If you have to let go and begin again hundreds or thousands of times,

It's actually fine.

It's a practice of recovery,

Of resilience,

Being able to let go and starting over.

So let's begin.

You can begin with repeating these phrases for yourself.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

You can repeat them with enough space,

Enough silence,

So that it's a rhythm that's pleasing to you.

This is like the song of the heart.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May I be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

And see if you can call to mind a benefactor.

Benefactor is someone who's helped you.

Maybe they've helped you directly.

They've helped pick you up when you've fallen down.

Or maybe you've never met them.

They've inspired you from afar.

They say that this is the being.

When you think of them,

You smile.

Might be an adult,

Might be a child,

Might be a pet.

Maybe there's someone who makes you smile.

And if so,

You can bring them here.

Get an image of them,

Say their name to yourself,

Get a feeling for their presence,

And offer the phrases of lovingkindness to them.

Even if the words don't seem really perfect,

They're serving us because they are the vehicle for the energy of the heart.

May you be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

Thank you.

And then a friend.

Let's start with a friend who's doing pretty well right now.

Someone like that comes to mind,

You can bring them here.

And offer the phrases of lovingkindness to them.

Your girl.

My girl.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Be happy.

Be healthy.

Live with ease.

Be happy.

Live with ease.

Be healthy.

Be happy.

Be healthy.

Be healthy.

Be happy.

Be healthy.

Be happy.

And we're going to have a gathering,

Just whoever comes to mind,

Friends,

Family,

Bring them together and we'll offer loving kindness to the collective.

May you be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May all beings everywhere,

All people,

All creatures,

All those in existence,

Near and far,

Known and unknown,

May all beings be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May all beings everywhere,

All creatures,

All those in existence,

Near and far,

Known and unknown,

May all beings be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

May all beings everywhere,

All creatures,

All those in existence,

Near and far,

Known and unknown,

May all beings be safe,

Be happy,

Be healthy,

Live with ease.

And when you feel ready,

You can open your eyes or lift your gaze and we'll end the meditation session.

So thank you so much and let's each of us try to bring some of this energy of loving kindness into our day.

Thank you.

Reviews

Your loving wisdom is a gift. Thank you Thank you💝🙏

I will carry this loving kindness forward through out my day.

I originally learned about loving kindness from you , early in my practice. Now I’m studying “ Chesed” and wanted to go back to review your teaching, with this context.. Thank you. Beautiful intersection. 🙏🏼

May we be safe
May we be happy
May we be healthy
May we be at ease and peace
Thank you Sharon for this powerful talk and meditation.
🙏🏿

Thank you! I've better understood loving kindness now. 🙏

In this crazy world we currently live in, my practice tonight was to find connection amongst all the divisiveness. These are very challenging times

My heart feels softer, more open. I was comforted and inspired by the practice.

I can feel the embodiment of the practice in your recorded presence, Sharon, thank you. Love

So direct and simple, yet so powerful and beneficial to life. Thank you, thank you!

Great meditation and explanation at the beginning

Love and kindness is the remedy when we’ve been girt or wronged, after a healthy acceptance of our anger or resentment, we can work on forgiveness by meditating love and kindness, as forgiveness heals our own hearts and opens the door to healing others too
Thank you Sharon

Do beautifully accessible.Love is an ability not a feeling.That is just anazing to hear.Thank you.x

Sharon, this was very powerful. I have known the words for a long time, but your voice and timing helped to truly open my heart to all with this gift.

Sharon is a wonderful teacher and this is a positive meditation for us and others, to wish each other loving kindness.

Thank you for this practice. Your introduction to the practice reminded me of some of its core invitations.

I found the evolving mantra helpful in beginning my week. Thank you for the meditation as it helps me to stay grounded, incorporating my values in life. Love to myself, grateful to those who bring joy, offering hope to those in struggle, and being with our community. Very nicely received!

I’m so grateful you’re here — on Insight Timer, and in the world. It’s a rare thing to find a being who truly is the real deal. And you are that and then some. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will donate as I can, but my gratitude remains immeasurable.

Wonderful. I will be repeating this meditation, bringing kindness to myself and all beings.

Thank you. There is such strength in this meditation.

Thank you for helping me connect with love during this difficult time 💜